When Tiger Woods' many indiscretions were discovered, his wife allegedly turned his golf clubs against him, bought a Swedish mansion in her own name—and, perhaps most tellingly, threw out his phone.

As other woman after other woman comes forward, spilling the gory details of her time with Tiger, it seems more and more likely that a telltale text message may be what, in the end, did the big cad in.

Unfortunately, if that's the case, Elin Nordegren won't be the first—or the last—spouse to discover her significant other's dalliances the new-fangled way.

"An intercepted text is the 2010 version of lipstick on the collar," says Jonathan Alpert, a New York City psychologist, who's recently seen a spike in clients wrestling with the aftermath of technologically fueled affairs. And the behavior is rampant on both coasts: "More frequently than ever, this is the way people are finding out that their partners are cheating—whether it's cheating with sex involved or an emotional affair," says Yvonne Thomas, PhD, an L.A. psychologist.

In fact, e-mail and texting—and now "sexting"—have leveled the playing field, making straying easier in the first place, whether you're a professional athlete or the average American.

There are even websites, like ashleymadison.com, designed to make a "more efficient" way for married couples to stray, says founder Noel Biderman, who built the site in 2001 after reading a statistic indicating that 35 percent of users on dating websites were actually married and looking.

In fact, most of today's indiscretions start virtually—a volley of desire lobbed back and forth at the speed of light, gaining intensity as it goes.
Yesteryear's trysts—bosses and secretaries, long nights at the office—now seem almost quaint, more like a Mad Men plotline.

Perhaps the only thing that hasn't changed is that when an unsuspecting partner clicks to find an e-mail that rocks her or him to the core, the pain isn't mitigated by the digital age.

"It felt like an out-of-body experience," says Wendy Silver*, 33, who discovered a slew of graphic text messages between her live-in boyfriend of three years and several different women an hour before her younger sister's engagement party.

She wasn't even snooping. He was out golfing for the day, and when she called, his jean pocket rang—he'd left the phone behind. Because he was hosting the after-party, she wanted to be sure he hadn't missed any messages.

"I'd never checked his phone before in my life," she says. "I just trusted him." After all, they'd grown up together. She'd known him since she was 14. At the time, they had been talking engagement.

Silver didn't waste any time. When he got back home, she confronted him and told him to leave the party. He burst into tears and apologized.

"I didn't think you would ever find out," he said.

"A part of me wishes I hadn't," she admits.

Dee Sanderson, 34, author of How to Marry a Loser Without Even Trying, was a little more tech-savvy: A computer programmer by trade, she decided to bug her husband's computer based on a bad feeling she had.

"It was a period in my marriage where it felt like something was wrong. We weren't connecting," she says. "I couldn't seem to get him interested in doing anything together."

She felt stupid installing the trace. "It will probably be nothing, and then I'll feel bad about not trusting him," she said. Instead she was shocked by her virtual haul.

"Lo and behold, he had three or four different e-mail accounts he'd opened, and he was trying to solicit women," she says. "One asked him outright, `Are you in a relationship?' And he said, `Oh, it's nothing serious.' That was what hurt the worst. He basically said that our marriage didn't mean anything."

She kicked him out—then relented, for a time.

"I started thinking, Well, he swears he never did anything...."

Indeed, high-tech infidelity creates a new gray area: If your significant other describes exactly what he'd like to do to someone else in gory detail, but he's never actually laid a hand on her, is it cheating?

"When you're going outside the boundaries of what you're supposed to share, emotionally and physically, only with your partner, cheating is cheating is cheating," says Thomas. "And it's not just women who are the casualties."

One Super Bowl Sunday, Anthony Wayne*, 49, was trying to fix his wife's computer while she was at the office. He checked to see that the e-mail was working and up popped three e-mails from a man he didn't know, with the subject line "Hook Up"

That, too, is a hallmark of the virtual affair: The anonymity of a text or IM allows you to reveal the sort of deep-seated thoughts and desires you might not even share with a longtime partner: Wayne and his wife had been married for 22 years.

And that loss of trust can be harder to repair than your average hard drive.

"We are good friends again," he says, "but I've had a hard time coming back to the same level of affection that I once had for her. I know I will never forget, but now I'm just trying to forgive."

How quickly you do so can depend on the world you come from. In other words, it's easy to say, "What is she hanging around for?" when you see the pain etched on the face of a Silda Spitzer or an Elin Nordegren.

But for certain athletes, entertainers, and politicians, technological progress may just be making a long-standing practice easier. "Cheating is more prevalent among high-profile clients," says Alpert. "Time away from home, busy schedules, lack of face time with a significant other, and high stress lead to unhealthy behaviors. Also, they might be pursued by a certain segment of the population who simply look to get involved with people with money and status. There's a complete lack of respect for the institution of marriage."

Vanessa Ramirez, 28, who married Ricky Davis, a guard for the Los Angeles Clippers, last summer, after dating him for 10 years, says being the wife of a professional athlete is its own sanity-testing can of worms.

In her world, as in Woods', the would-be suitors aren't just waiting in the virtual wings. The women who want a piece of him (and his paycheck) stalk. They scheme. They materialize in her husband's hotel lobby night after night.

"I used to make myself crazy," says Ramirez. "I've met plenty of NBA players and thought, Oh, they're wonderful. Then I might pop up on a road trip and see them doing something they shouldn't, and I'm like, `How can you be so wonderful with your children and do this?'"

She and Davis have two children of their own—and she's now a stepmother to his daughter, conceived after a one-night stand that happened while they were together but before they were married.

"There is no `understanding,'" she says. "I was holding off on the marriage. I said I don't want to get married if you're going to get out there and be like the rest of the guys. Now that we are, I wouldn't accept that kind of behavior. After 10 years, if you haven't gotten it out of your system, God help you."

Interestingly, this high-rolling, high-infidelity environment is the same one that Noel Biderman, founder of ashleymadison.com, came from.

"Before this, I was a sports attorney," he says. "I represented those professional athletes. Maybe it was easier for me to conceive of this culture."

He went on to create a website that has polarized mainstream America—and often caused it to demonize him: When the ladies of The View invited him on the show, they made glib comparisons to Hitler. Elisabeth Hasselbeck dubbed the site "Chuck E. Cheese for cheaters"—referring to the credits the married and browsing visitors must purchase to contact another Ashley Madison member.

And the members who flock there to seek out an illicit affair— 5 million strong—don't always fit the mold you might imagine.

The fastest-growing segment on the site is what Biderman calls "the honeymooners." That is, women married for less than three years.

"It's almost like, they're married now, but marriage doesn't smell right to them, so really quickly and intuitively they're trying to determine what they should do," he says. "They're testing the waters: What other suitors might be out there?"

Amy Kessler*, 34, who lives in L.A., saw Biderman's appearance on The View and logged on. "I was just kind of looking, but I thought maybe because I was married, and the men were married, then I wouldn't start any trouble," she says.

Married for three years, she and her husband "are best friends, but more like brother and sister. There's no passion," says Kessler.

They haven't had sex since the summer. But it wasn't always that way. "When I met him, he was really passionate and happy. That's why I married him," she says.

Then her husband lost his job. She thinks he's depressed and has been for a year, but no amount of intervention has been able to pull him out of his funk—or away from his computer.

So she turned to hers. Two days after joining the site, Kessler started e-mailing with a cute, successful 33-year-old business owner, also from L.A. He was a married father of two. They exchanged messages for a month before meeting up.

"At first he seemed too slick. I couldn't believe he'd be interested in me. And he was on this site to begin with," she says with distaste. But the more she heard about his story—he and his wife were also distant¬—and the more he lavished attention on her, the more alluring the situation became.

"I was just feeling so neglected," she says. "And this guy found me so attractive. He thought I was funny. My husband is so addicted to his computer and his job search. It's been a long time."

Now she and her married paramour have been dating for seven months. "I see him a lot. Maybe two or three times a week. I feel like his girlfriend, but I would never use that word. I'm all satisfied and happy," she says, "but I don't know how long this can go on."

And her deepening feelings do scare her. "This started so casual, but it's not casual anymore," she says. "I know I'm getting so attached to him, and that wasn't the deal going in."

In a perfect world, says Kessler, "in a perfect perfect world, my husband would wake up and pay attention to me because I really love him—I love him more than anybody."

And if, in this day and age, you wonder how someone could leave an e-mail trail, just waiting to be discovered, Kessler's tale may hold a clue.

"I've come really close to telling him about the other guy. I've alluded to it," she says. "When someone's that deep in that detached world, I think you need an event, but I don't want something that incendiary."

She doesn't think her husband suspects a thing, so she's not all that careful, and her illicit affair remains a secret—at least for the time being.